Working with influencers is a great way to strike up a conversation with your target market, increase sales, and create exciting new content for your organization. But, instead of seeking out influencers and working with them, why not establish your own brand as a thought leader?

In this post, we’re going to share practical advice on using video to accelerate your status as a trusted, knowledgeable influencer in your own right.

First things first: find out exactly what influencers do

Like most things in life, when someone is good at doing something, they make it look easy. The reality can be very different – what appears effortless has often involved hours of diligent work.

It’s worth seeking out an influencer and taking a look at the content on their social media platforms. We recommend having a chat with them about the nuts and bolts of their job. Consider asking the following questions:

How long did it take you to build up your followers?

How many hours a week do you spend creating videos?

What’s the best way to engage with your followers?

What type of content have you found is the most popular?

Have you any tips that you’d like to share about becoming an influencer using video?

If it sounds like you can handle the time commitment, and you’re buzzing with great ideas, then go for it!

Put together a (realistic) strategy

It will take a while to gain substantial numbers of followers and even longer to increase sales. Don’t put too much pressure on yourself with regard to figures. It’s far more important to put together an achievable, sustainable plan for using video to become an influencer.

Although it will require serious work, try to ensure that video creation remains one of your more enjoyable marketing activities. A sense of fun will be communicated to viewers. In order to come across as entertaining and genuine, you really will have to be passionate about your subject. Our post How to Charm Your Audience will give you food for thought.

By this stage, you will have a good understanding of the time it takes to create engaging video content and build an audience. Work out who your audience is, what they’re interested in, what they might like to learn about, and where they like to hang out online. Creating viewer personas might be a helpful way to visualize who exactly comprises your target audience.

Being an influencer doesn’t mean that you have to create videos about absolutely everything related to your business area. That would be impossible! So, decide what your niche is. Do some research on what your competitors are doing so you can be sure that you’re offering something original. Highly targeted video content will be so much more valuable to your target market.

Working with other influencers

Although you want to establish yourself as a thought leader, you’ll need others to help you get there. Nurturing relationships with other influencers is essential. That means striking up conversations with them, sharing information with them that might be useful, and engaging with their content. If they post a video online that’s relevant to your audience, share it! Let the creator know you like it. In time, you will have built a rapport with them that could prove invaluable.

To give your numbers a boost, schedule some videos that are co-produced with established influencers. These could be individuals in your industry or influencers in an industry that’s related to yours. Choose someone whose style you think would compliment your own. In terms of content, why not try:

A discussion about what’s hot and what’s not in your industry

Getting together to spread the word about your favorite charity

A ‘get to know you’ Q&A with the influencer

Introducing a brand new product

Celebrating a milestone (and offering a giveaway in conjunction with this to really boost audience figures)

Ask your followers what they’d like to watch

Staying ahead of the curve

In order to become an influencer, you have to establish your brand as one that doesn’t just understand what’s currently happening in your industry, but what’s about to happen. That means staying in touch with trends.

Whenever there’s breaking news in your industry – especially if it’s in your chosen niche – you should be the one to break it. And if that’s not possible, be the first to post your video analyzing what’s happening, and asking for your viewers’ opinions. Your goal is to not just be another brand rehashing the same old news, but the leader who informs their followers of recent developments, and what it all means for them.

It’s also important to stay informed of everything that’s happening in the world of video marketing. Your message is important, but so is the way in which you choose to deliver it. The world of video marketing moves quickly, so try to spend time each week catching up on what’s happening in it.

For bitesize chunks of information, follow influencers online who are on top of what’s going on with video marketing. We love Cisco’s Senior Marketing Manager and comedy writer Tim Washer, founder of ReelSEO (now Tubular Insights) Mark R. Robertson, and of course the SproutVideo blog! You’ll want your videos to not only be informative, but also on-trend when it comes to aesthetics and production techniques.

Takeaways

Rather than jumping on the bandwagon of influencer marketing, becoming an influencer in your own right is an effective way of opening up the channels of communication with your target market. It lets them know not only that your brand is out there, but that it’s trustworthy and is a recognized authority in the industry.

Using video to become an influencer takes strategizing, a heap of original ideas, and an in-depth understanding of what your audience wants to watch.

Are you on a journey to becoming an influencer? Share your most popular video with the SproutVideo community below or on Twitter!